CUDAHY - Every day, students at Cudahy Middle School get the chance to be ninjas or cross a bridge over a raging river.

Thanks to newly created flex classes, students can dive into their interest areas or spend extra time learning a certain subject during the school day, such as working on Chromebooks in a "Tech Ninjas" class or participating in a team-building activity like "Bridge Over a Raging River" in a physical-education flex class.

Flexible classes

This summer, school leaders were discussing how they could create a time for students to get extra help they may need in a class or be able to explore something they may be interested in, a way of personalizing learning at the school.

"We wanted it to be something that allows for student movement in and out of interventions...and allows kids to move in an out of interventions as needed, but also allows student to explore different passions they might have," said Anna Champeau, communications liaison for the school.

So, the school came up with the idea of flex classes.

Though flex is still a "work in progress," Champeau said, the school now has a variety of different classes set up for flex time, from jazz band to math, and there will likely be more options added in the future.

Smoke Gouda and Havarti cheese sit out for sampling during flex period. As a part of the physical education flex class, the students held a fruit and cheese tasting day, an event part of Fuel Up to Play 60.(Photo: Submitted)

Tech Ninjas

One of the current classes is Lori Ullenberg's Tech Ninjas class, where kids interested in technology can dive into whatever they may be passionate about.

Though Tech Ninjas started before flex was created, and before Ullenberg was a teacher at the middle school, it has since expanded. During this class, students work on repairing other students' Chromebooks — since the school has a 1:1 Chromebook program — they create a school newsletter, and they even make a weekly school news video called "The Bulldog Bark."

The students will also pick up graphic design projects teachers might request, like making a poster.

"It's a lot of self-direction; that's different from my other digital technology classes," Ullenberg described. "Really, it's anything they have an interest in doing."

Recently, a student wanted to learn animation, so she let the student spend a few weeks learning it and then create a video to demonstrate what they learned.

Other classes are driven by what the kids want to learn, as well.

Physical-education

At the end of the semester, Tim Griffith and Melissa Strzok, who teach a physical education flex class, let the students pick what games they wanted to learn and then teach the class the new activity.

Smoke Gouda and Havarti cheese sit out for sampling during flex period. As a part of the physical education flex class, the students held a fruit and cheese tasting day, an event part of Fuel Up to Play 60.(Photo: Submitted)

"This will be interesting," Strzok said. "It's kind of requiring them to work on their speaking skills and to be able to kind of look at things from the teacher perspective, too."

In addition to activities like these, the class also tries out other collaborative or team-building kinds of games. They also participate in different Fuel Up to Play 60 events that teach about creating healthy lifestyles, like a cheese a fruit tasting that the class organized earlier this year.

At the tasting, the kids tried different cheeses like smoked gouda or fruits they hadn't had before, like mangoes. Since it was a part of the Fuel Up to Play 60 program, the school also got to enter to win an autographed football, and won.

Something for everyone

Whether it's diving into an area of interest, or diving into an area where student may need to grow, flex time is designed to be enriching for every student.

Math teacher Michael Hennessy says that students in his math flex class have already shown progress in the subject. After a few months spending extra time on math, he said he has seen student test scores in the Star assessment "increase tremendously" from the test scores at the beginning of the school year.

Champeau said the school will continue to work on the flex program, possibly adding more classes and giving students more choices down the road.

Teachers, like Strzok, are excited for what's to come.

"I can see this flex class evolving into something where kids have the choice to be able to pick from a list of different options of things they would like to do," Strzok said. "Just to explore and be able to give kids more of a variety of things to learn. I just think that's really neat."